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Solar Spacecraft Fails. Nighttime Launch Bad Idea
When dealing with complex systems, single point of failures suck. Case in point: because of a booster failure in the recent Russian-private launch of a solar sail spacecraft (The launch took place from a submarine) The usual method to handle such problems is redundant systems. For instance, the Space Shuttle has triple redundancy on all of it's flight systems, including the ability to go to orbit if one of the main engines does not work properly. But there's other ways to handle complex system issues as well.
In many systems, failure modes are considered. For instance, if your GPS in your car fails it's usually not a big deal, but what if the GPS fails on the airplane you're in just getting ready to land? The airplane not only has different systems, it has completely different methods for determining where you are, including inertial, radio, and GPS. So the "failure mode" is just to use the other methods.
Kind of hard to do with a rocket, eh? But if JP Aerospace has its way, perhaps we'll all be flying into orbit in blimps. Sounds too crazy to be true, I know, but the math looks good and it's got a heck of a low cost-to-orbit, so I wish them all the best. If your balloon fails, you just skydive from space back home.
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